With malicious actors employing innovative ways to target and infiltrate networks and information systems by introducing malware through phishing and spoofing, organizations need SPF record checkers for their domains to search existing SPF records, validate them, and highlight errors, to be corrected at the earliest. SPF records are crucial as they ensure the authentication of the emails originating from their domain and guarantee delivery.
Email frauds and phishing attacks are increasing by the day. Phishing and spoofing emails have become some of the most common cyber threats that can introduce malware into organizations’ information systems to cause irreparable data breaches. An SPF record helps validate the email’s origins by verifying the associated IP address against the sending domain’s owner credentials. The SPF Record checker searches, displays, and validates the respective SPF record while highlighting errors, if any. An interactive online malware analysis service such as ANY.RUN can be leveraged for dynamic and static research and analysis of most types of threats. At the same time, organizations can connect an SPF Record Checker with ANY.RUN’s malware sandbox to validate the SPF record.
Why SPF records must be validated using a comprehensive SPF record checker
Here are five compelling reasons to validate your website’s SPF records use an SPF record checker.
● Stops Phishing Attacks: Phishing emails use spoofing to mislead the recipients about the message’s origins. SPF, an email validation system, with the help of an SPF record checker, a diagnostic tool, helps prevent spams by detecting such attempts. Generally, such emails carry fake email sender addresses. SPF records help verify the sender’s IP address and ensure that genuine emails reach the recipient’s inbox. And, when it comes to email frauds and phishing, ANY.RUN’s sandbox can be used to check all suspicious links and emails.
● Boosts Domain Reputation: SPF record checker validates the SPF record that verifies an IP address with its domain and ensures delivery of emails to the recipient. An SPF policy provides a better trust signal to ISPs and increases the likelihood of genuine emails arriving at the inbox. It also prevents the backscatter of errors and bounces notifications when spammers attempt to abuse the domain. All this helps enhance the domain’s reputation.
● Improves Delivery Rate: SPF records add the element of trust to emails and increase the chances of email delivery to the intended recipient. Besides, SPF works with standards like DMARC and DKIM to provide authentication and improve the email delivery rate.
● Prevents Malware: Cyber adversaries try to spoof a domain name for carrying out phishing and whaling attacks. It could potentially lead to the delivery of ransomware and malware and cause financial loss or fraud. SPF record checker verifies the IP address with its domain and authenticates it. It prevents malicious actors from using the domain to launch their attacks.
● Reduces Rejection Rate: SPF records enable the recipient email servers to determine the email’s legitimacy. Thereby, it helps in bringing down the chances of rejection and bounces.
What does an SPF record checker check?
A record checker ensures that a record is valid by checking several parameters. The following are the most important among them.
● Existence Of The Record: It first confirms that a record exists in the DNS.
● Multiple Records: Only one SPF record is allowed in the DNS. Hence, it checks if there is more than one record.
● Maximum Lookups: The number of lookups possible is set to 10. Hence, it checks if it exceeds the limit.
● PTR Mechanism: It checks if a PTR mechanism is used as it is not recommended to use one.
Top 6 SPF record checkers
Discussed above were the reasons for using SPF record checkers on a website. Now, here are the top six SPF record checkers you can use for your business’s domain.
- Dmarcian: Dmarcian, trusted by reputed organizations globally, helps protect a brand name and identity by providing high levels of security, enhancing visibility, ensuring delivery of emails, and enabling easy identification across email servers. Dmarcian SPF record checker is a diagnostic tool that presents a graphical view of SPF records. It allows one to identify the servers authorized to send emails on behalf of a specific domain. It is ideal for organizations that require frequent support or incident-response assurances.
- Mimecast: Mimecast is a high-quality SPF record checker working on a mission to mitigate the risks faced by domains from security breaches, email-based attacks, and data leaks. Mimecast DMARC Analyzer offers a high-quality SPF Record Checker to validate an SPF record. It does it by considering various factors, such as SPF record existence, checking for multiple SPF records in DNS, performing maximum lookups, and even validate the SPF macros in use.
- Agari: Agari, trusted by some of the top corporate entities worldwide, offers user-friendly products to solve email security problems. This SPF record checker is different from its competitors, Mimecast or Dmarcian. It leverages vast data sets and uses Machine Learning techniques to predict whether to trust outbound and inbound email messages. It helps mitigate the risks if an email slips through the security controls. Besides, Agari directly engages with adversaries and outmaneuvers threat actors by capturing unique data and insights. Thus, the user gets comprehensive data security.
- PowerDMARC: PowerDMARC is an SPF record checker that uses AI and threat intelligence to prevent email spoofing and combat BEC. It provides a simple-to-use online tool to check whether a domain is protected or not. SMBs can analyze if they can benefit from using Powerdmarc. It offers a 15-day trial period, during which the email protection features are available for free. The tool ensures the safety of the outbound and inbound emails, enhances domain reputation, and prevents attackers from compromising the organization’s security.
- Fraudmarc: Fraudmarc, preferred by the world’s leading brands, offers reliable SPF record-checking features. The Fraudmarc SPF record checker verifies if the domain has published a valid SPF record. It also enables the user to learn how to fix the most common errors instantly. In addition, Fraudmarc’s standards ensure that the third-party vendors and in-house teams of an organization follow the best email practices. Overall, Fraudmarc focuses on making the internet safer for its users by providing robust online brand identity protection.
- DuoCircle: Cybercriminals try to impersonate legitimate users and attempt to barge into the enterprise network periphery. DuoCircle is a new entrant in this space and is quickly becoming a trusted name. DuoCircle’s security-focused solutions can help you reinforce SPF record checks and help prevent any domain impersonation. These checks play a significant role in thwarting these intrusion attempts.
Email frauds cause significant harm to organizations globally – financial and reputational. Adversaries use phishing emails to target unsuspecting users and domains, causing data breaches, among other cyber scams. SPF record checker verifies and validates the SPF records that help in authenticating the domain’s IP address to ensure that the recipients receive genuine emails only. Thus, it prevents spoofing and maintains the user’s brand reputation while providing security against phishing emails.
Brad Slavin
Before joining DuoCircle, a cloud email security firm, Brad began his career in network security by founding a regional ISP in California and was the co-founder of wireless wardriving and security software Netstumber.com; which was the recipient of the "Editor's Choice" - Laptop Magazine & Ziff-Davis i3 Award for innovation.
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